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"Now that we're certain of the value of storytelling, the pressing question that remains is how to tell stories on the web. I don't think that the existence of the story is in question-every product or service's value can be expressed as a story. The difficulty is in framing that story for the people that you know need to hear it. Take some time to remind yourself of that story: What was the problem that you set out to solve? How did you find the solution? Why is your solution special? Why are things different now that you've solved the problem? It's a simple structure, but often one that eludes marketers who are sometimes too close to their product or service to see the story clearly. Once you're clear on the story, there are two things to focus on next: (1) Writing the story, and (2) making sure that your website supports that story."

A story has a beginning, a middle, and a cleanly wrapped-up ending. Whether told around a campfire, read from a book, or played on a DVD, a story goes from point A to B and then C. It follows a trajectory, a Freytag Pyramid-perhaps the line of a human life or the stages of the hero's journey. A story is told by one person or by a creative team to an audience that is usually quiet, even receptive. Or at least that's what a story used to be, and that's how a story used to be told. Today, with digital networks and social media, this pattern is changing. Stories now are open-ended, branching, hyperlinked, cross-media, participatory, exploratory, and unpredictable. And they are told in new ways: Web 2.0 storytelling picks up these new types of stories and runs with them, accelerating the pace of creation and participation while revealing new directions for narratives to flow.

I like telling stories. What sort of stories do I like to tell? Stories about days at school, life in the ANZ Bank, stories my father told me, historic sagas and the like. lots of links to digital storytelling later down on the page

I like telling stories. What sort of stories do I like to tell? Stories about days at school, life in the ANZ Bank, stories my father told me, historic sagas and the like.

'Meta-reading': the generational differences in consuming news May 13th, 2009Posted by Judith Townend in Events, Online Journalism, Social media and blogging Turi Munthe, CEO and founder of the citizen journalism site, Demotix, shared an interesting thought with participants of the Voices Online Blogging Conference on Monday. The young Demotix interns consume news differently from the way he does. He elaborated to Journalism.co.uk after the panel. 'Meta-reading': "There is a generational split, but not in the way everyone imagines. It's much more recent than that," he said. People only ten years younger - he is in his 30s - consume news differently from the way he does, Munthe told Journalism.co.uk. The interns in the office ('who play a hugely important role: they're regional editors and they get properly stuck into what we do') read slightly differently, he said. "They are getting the Twitter feeds, and the blog posts, and the Facebook messaging and the free papers, and everything else, and are very happy with it. Much more happy with it than I am." "Essentially, they process information differently. It's a 'meta-reading'. It's not about individual brands. They are fully aware of all the back-stories of all the stories they're getting," he says. It's a 'degree of sophistication,' he said, 'which reads the interests behind the news as an integral part of the news'.

There are a myriad of options out there right now when it comes to tools for multimedia storytelling. The combination of tools you use can be your greatest strength or your greatest weakness. The important thing is to find the right combination of gear that fits your style of shooting and allows you to tell the best story possible. Below is a list of tools that we may use a combination of on any given multimedia shoot. Again the importance is to find what combination works best for you. Multimedia tools are constantly evolving. There are many options on the market from which you can mix and match to best suit your needs. The following describes our current field production kit.

"This is a true story. Professor "Jones" decides to experiment with a blog in his class. It takes him about 10 minutes to set up a free site using Blogger. He then watches students engage in lively discussions of case studies outside of class, and tweaks the blog as experience teaches him how best to use the system. Teaching with Technology column Thinking that others might want to add a blog to their class as well, he goes to IT and offers to lead workshops for faculty on blogging in higher education. A few weeks later he is informed by IT that they have not only rejected his proposal, but that he is in violation of university policy and must stop immediately. Professor Jones asks what university policy he has violated, and is told that the policy has not yet been created, but will be soon. Professor Jones asks how he could possibly have violated a policy that does not yet exist. Soon afterward the IT department announces a new initiative to implement blogging at the institution. A committee is formed, and after nearly a year of deliberation they choose to pay for a system-rather than adopt a free, readily available system-because it allows for centralized control. IT sends out an email announcing the new system, along with a text document outlining a long list of policies that strictly limit how it may be used. No one adopts the system, leading IT to complain that faculty do not want to use technology in their teaching."

"As the world's leading source of intelligent information, we recognize that our employees actively participate in social media and online communications. These guidelines are designed to help protect the reputation and credibility of Thomson Reuters, our employees, and contractors who create or contribute to blogs, wikis, social networks, virtual worlds or other social media. Whether you use Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Yammer, Wikipedia or MySpace - or comment on blogs or online media stories - these guidelines are for you. They cover three main areas: 1. Basic principles for all types of social media 2. Special guidelines for professional use of social media on behalf of the company 3. Special guidelines for personal use of social media "

"Social bookmarking sites like Delicious are useful for collecting bookmarks, but they don't allow users to really draw connections and tell stories. That's where curation-focused services like Pearltrees and Trailmeme come in. Trailmeme, which we first looked at in December, was incubated at Xerox and launches at DEMO this week. It allows users to bookmark sites and then organize them in tidy diagrams, making it easy to highlight the relationship between different items and for readers to browse these links."

Rolling Your Own Newsroom by Robert Passarella Financial professionals by their very nature are news junkies. I've always enjoyed building my own quick tools to parse information and share it with my co-workers, friends, and family. When I was at Bear Stearns I built a few subject-related iGoogle tabs and shared them with clients or co-workers. I looked at these tools as the poor man's version of Bloomberg, since you could cobble together Yahoo or Google finance data with news feeds to make a focused custom page. Recently my friends and family were asking me how to keep track of the "Wall Street Crisis." I gave them sites and feeds--but they kept asking me for what I was reading. I spend a considerable amount of time reading, watching, and listening to news all day long. I email, Twitter, and forward links and stories throughout the day. So in essence, I am my own news editor. I enjoy tools like Snackr (thanks Marshall) which allows me to have a real time ticker-like interface for my feeds, and digg the giant social news filter. But one of the key tools I love to use is Google's Reader.

World Without Walls: Learning Well with Others How to teach when learning is everywhere. by Will Richardson Print Forward Share Comments(0) Comment RSS Four teachers from High Tech High. Bringing Their A-Game: Humanities teacher Spencer Pforsich, digital arts/sound production teacher Margaret Noble, humanities teacher Leily Abbassi, and math/science teacher Marc Shulman make lessons come alive on the High Tech campuses in San Diego. Credit: David Julian Earlier this year, as I was listening to a presentation by an eleven-year-old community volunteer and blogger named Laura Stockman about the service projects she carries out in her hometown outside Buffalo, New York, an audience member asked where she got her ideas for her good work. Her response blew me away. "I ask my readers," she said. I doubt anyone in the room could have guessed that answer. But if you look at the Clustrmap on Laura's blog, Twenty Five Days to Make a Difference, you'll see that Laura's readers -- each represented by a little red dot -- come from all over the world. She has a network of connections, people from almost every continent and country, who share their own stories of service or volunteer to assist Laura in her work. She's sharing and learning and collaborating in ways that were unheard of just a few years ago.

"Top 10 Sites for Digital Storytelling Digital Storytelling is the practice of telling stories w/ computer tools. Wikipedia explains teachers use digital storytelling for several reasons such as,"1) to incorporate multimedia into their curriculum and 2) Teachers can also introduce storytelling in combination with social networking in order to increase global participation, collaboration, and communication skills. Moreover, digital storytelling is a way to incorporate and teach the twenty-first century student the twenty-first century technology skills such as information literacy, visual literacy, global awareness, communication and technology literacy.""

How to Hack Together a Twitter Client Guy Kawasaki of How to Change the WorldGuy Kawasaki of How to Change the World | May 4th, 2009 - 03:57 PM (89) found this useful. Do you? Yes NNW.jpg Sometimes you can make do with what's available. Take, for example, Twitter clients. Until someone creates my fantasy Twitter client, I am using an application that doesn't have "Tw" anywhere in its name or heritage. It's called NetNewsWire. This is bizarre because NetNewsWire is a RSS reader. Its purpose is to aggregate news feeds from websites and blogs. (Ironically, my company, Alltop, is in the business of making RSS readers unnecessary, but that's another story.) Using NetNewsWire for Twitter is like using a Toyota Prius as a taxi cab: it makes sense because of the Prius's great mileage, but I doubt that Toyota planned it this way or optimized Prius for this purpose.

"An e-Literate reader comments on my post about Blackboard owing Desire2Learn money: The amount [that Blackboard will have to pay Desire2Learn, including the original award plus interest] will probably be over $3.8M USD from my rough estimates which is higher than the expected writedown Blackboard took. This should result in additional expenses that will have to be recorded by BBBB. What's also interesting is that Blackboard's top execs made record bonuses before this writedown, at the same time they took away any salary increases and the 401K plans for the regular staff. I think that is the bigger story."

"A look at how social media can be used to extend stories and start conversations. For more visit http://WorkBookProject.com"

After exam boards have been conducted, letters signed and mailed to students, external examiners thanked and supplementary assessments created, there is a moment - a fracture in time - where academics breathe, reflect and consolidate. Before writing courses for the September start, I take a week to think about the semesters that have passed. I review my teaching journal, think about student reviews and locate the literature that has emerged in the past few months while I've been buried in marking, moderating and examining. This year has been special. All my students - from first year through to doctoral candidates - have been engaged, challenging and provocative. They have big personalities, work hard and care about both personal success and wider social justice. There was Alex who saw every concept, from postFordism through to information literacy, through the gauze of Lady Gaga. Toby never knew how extraordinary he was until the final seminar of his first year when fellow students burst into spontaneous applause in response to one of his comments. Aimee thought deeply, read widely and arrived 30 minutes before each lecture to make sure she did not miss it. Sophie discovered Google Scholar early in the course and proceeded to give her colleagues updates of the conference papers she had read during the week.

"Get Started With Google Wave From Wired How-To Wiki Jump to: navigation, search Let's just say this up front: Google Wave doesn't make sense at first glance. It kinda looks like e-mail because you send messages to friends, but it's also like chat because the messages you send to friends can be received and responded to in real time. It's also a little like Google Docs, because the messages you send are rich in display features. However, if you look at Google Wave as a mishmash of Web 2.0 technology, you're missing the point. Google Wave is a communication device all its own. It allows you to communicate online as if you're in the same room, and it makes your communication with large groups of people more powerful and useful. If you really want to conceptualize Google Wave, you're going to have to use it. Here's how. "